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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 2009361" data-attributes="member: 172">Encyclopaedia Arcane: ElementalismThe Encyclodaedia Arcane series of books by Mongoose Publishing provide new options for arcane spellcaster characters in the d20 system. The Elementalism book presents new options for arcane spellcasters that wish to focus on one of the four classical elements: air, earth, fire, and water.A First LookEncyclopaedia Arcane: Elementalism shares the same format as the other Mongoose Encyclopaedia books: a 64-page perfect bound book priced at $14.95 US.The cover depicts a wizard controlling, summoning, or confronting creatures rising from a flow of lava.The interior is black-and-white. The quality of the interior art is mixed. Danilo Moretti and Renato Guedes provide some nicely detailed illustrations, but most of the remaining illustrations don't measure up to those two artists.The body text in the book is moderately sized and the paragraphs are single spaced.A Deeper LookUnlike many of the Encyclopaedia books, Elementalism does not introduce any new classes. Instead, the new mechanics of the book are introduced though circles. Each circle requires the expenditure of experience points, money, and training time, and represents successive training in the character's element of specialty.There are five circles in all. Each circle has its own entry requirements in terms of skill ranks, attributes, spellcasting abilities, and in-game requirements. These requirements slant the circles primarily to wizards, since sorcerers do not have in-class access to some of the knowledge skills required. For example, the first circle requires the character have 5 ranks in knowledge (nature). Thus a single classed wizard would have to be 2nd level to enter the first circle, but a sorcerer would have to be 7th level. The author is apparently to this fact, as early on an example is given of a sorcerer contemplating entering the first circle at 2nd level.Each circle has different benefits. For example, a first circle elementalist gains a +2 bonus to the DC of all spells related to her specific element and a bonus spell of that element, but cannot cast spells of the opposing element. A second circle elementalist gains an elemental version of their familiar and a bonus when dealing with creatures of his element with conjuration, summoning, or abjuration spells.At the lowest circles, the elementalist's specialization pertains to only spells that directly correspond to the elementalist's specialty. For example, a first circle fire elementalist would have access to and be able to apply her bonuses towards spells like fireball and fire shield. At higher circles, the elementalist can obtain access and benefits relating to spells that have more tenuous relationships to the element of choice. For example, a third circle fire elementalist can use spells designated as having a "subtle correspondence" like light and lightning bolt. Fifth circle elementalists have access to spells designated as having a "higher correspondence"; in the case of fire, this would be spells like emotion and polymorph other. In many cases, this gives the spellcaster access to divine spells.A second option that the book provides for mastering the elements is called elemental mastery. Characters with elemental circles are best at it, but all arcane spellcasters with some knowledge of elemental spells can use these rules.The elemental mastery rules allow the character to convert spell slots into energy. Once this is done, the caster can use that energy to manipulate an element in various ways. For example, a character may sacrifice spell slots to add elemental damage to a spell, enhance an elemental spell, move his self and others by moving elements, and to imprison creatures in an element.These seem like an interesting variant to spellcasting, but I am a little dismayed that the author allows this flexible option to characters without so much as the expenditure of a feat.The Elemental Invocation section provides an alternate means by which the character can summon and barter with intelligent elemental creatures (which are described later in the book.), or to coerce or force summoned creatures into receptacles to create magic items. This section seems fairly balanced, and as the GM will have to roleplay the part of elemental courts that the character deals with, creates some interesting roleplaying inroads.The Elemental Magic section introduces some new spells. Many spells can relate to any of the elements, such as the Magic Circle against Elements spell. Other spells relate to specific elements. Most of these spells relate to air or water, in order to make up for the lack of such spells in the core rules.The Elemental Courts discusses the political structure that exist among intelligent elementals. Elemental nobles, in addition to their political position, have additional powers (applied much as a template). They can use the elemental mastery abilities as described earlier in the book, as well as the ability to summon elementals and use other spell like abilities. The section also discusses some particulars of each of the elemental courts.The Elemental Monsters section introduces a variety of new elemental creatures. The most prominent among these are the higher elementals. These are four more intelligent version of elementals, gnomides, royal salamanders, sylphs, and undines. The lesser phoenix and ushkya are two other elemental creatures, native to the fire and water planes respectively. Finally the elemental native template allows the GM to create elemental versions of creatures.As with many Mongoose books, there are sections entitled Help for Games Masters and Designer's Notes. Many GMs might skip past these sections or only give it a cursory read in many cases. In this book, the Help for Games Masters section has some good suggestions for using the material in the rest of the book if you have reservations about the nonstandard approach of some of the material (e.g., treating the circles as a prestige class.) The section also has some other good suggestions and implementations, such as adding creatures with the elemental native template to the summoned creatures list.ConclusionAs mentioned, I dislike the approach of using circles as a means of creating elementalists. I find that jumping the hurdle of prerequisites even once for a prestige class can put players off; making a character face such hurdles five times would probably dissuade most players from taking advantage of elementalism. You are much better off taking advantage of the recommendations in the GM section.Though I do have problems with the way the book is implemented in some cases, the book has some real strengths. The elemental mastery and invocation seem like neat variants, and the elemental spells, courts and creatures should be useful even if you forego using the rest of the rules in the book. Further, I really prefer the way that elemental spells are laid out here to the "energy association" method that many Wizards of the Coast products use.-Alan D. Kohler</blockquote>

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